Change

How fortunate am I, an anonymous figure lost amongst a jumbled forest of countless multitudes, an unremarkable individual not all that different from the rest, perhaps even your quintessential Average Joe...neither the tallest nor shortest, youngest nor oldest, fittest nor frailest, grandest nor plainest. I am merely one. But on this fine day I am one who, after having been scorched by the flame too many times before, is now unimaginably blessed and privileged to be roused from my cold reverie by a warm and nurturing light the likes of which I’ve never seen nor felt in all my life.

I can’t say there was any one precise thing that emboldened me to reach for the light this time without the slightest fear of getting burned. It was, paradoxically, in a vague yet unmistakably palpable sense, just a feeling that grew with insatiable fervor with each passing day, until one very early morning in the cold dark of night, in the middle of a forest glade beneath an inky-black firmament in which the Perseids illumed and evanesced with the skittish whimsy of fireflies, I chanced the biggest leap of faith I could’ve ever imagine myself taking: I asked for the honor of being keeper of the flame to the end of days...a troth to never allow it to flicker, let alone extinguish...a pledge to give my life without hesitation if called upon to protect it from any hostile or happenstance threat of harm...an oath to fuel the fire with every stroke of my mortal heart to its very last beat, and to stoke the flames to incendiary heat with the bellows of my lungs to their very last breath...